All things FSU: October 2014

Friday, October 31, 2014

Florida State at Louisville – Highest Overnight Rating on ESPN this Season

Mike Humes ‏@MikeHumesESPN

FSU-Louisville: 3.5 overnight rating, ESPN's highest CFB game of season: http://bit.ly/ThursNightRating … pic.twitter.com/HydoBTHTiL

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FSU beat 10 straight ranked opponents

AP Rankings first, Caches Poll 2nd, CFP Rankings last.

Last loss being to #6/#6 Florida in 2012.
Win against #16/#16 Northern Illinois in 2012.
Win against #25/NR Maryland in 2013.
Win against #3/#4 Clemson in 2013.
Win against #7/#6 Miami in 2013.
Win against #20/#20 Duke in 2013.
Win against #2/#2 Auburn in 2013.
Win against #22/#24 Clemson in 2014.
Win against #5/#5 Notre Dame in 2014.
WIn against NR/NR/#25 Louisville in 2014.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

#SECBias

Outstanding article from accfootballrx.com.

#SECBias

"From the AP College Football website article "As SEC Dominates Polls, Calls of SEC Bias Rise":

Duck fans in Oregon and Buckeye backers in Ohio are united. Seminoles in the Florida panhandle and Sooners in the Oklahoma panhandle are rallying around a common cause.

As the Southeastern Conference was trending last weekend after becoming the first league to hold four of the top five spots in the AP Top 25, fans of other conferences had an angry response: #SECBias.

The article acknowledges that SEC teams have won 7 of the last 8 BCS Championships (but not the most recent one!), but also that fans have pointed a finger at the AP writers themselves who are accused of trying to "make sure [the] first playoff has 4 SEC teams." In defense of the AP, most of the voters are from outside of the SEC footprint (though the AP did not provide information about the alma maters of those voters).

Jerry Palm of CBS.com says he sees bias in the preseason polls, but hasn't noticed an SEC bias in the middle of the season. Of course, by this point, the damage caused by those overinflated preseason polls may already be done...

I've documented in this blog how SEC teams don't fall as far when they lose as teams in other conferences. However, the AP article adds that they may also get a boost when they beat other SEC teams. For example, Mississippi State rose from unranked to #1 by beating three top-10 SEC teams. One of those - LSU - is currently ranked 24th (some would say overrated at that). Another of them was Texas AM, which itself

shot up the rankings after an opening-night romp at South Carolina, but is now unranked and on a three-game losing streak.

Coincidentally, Alabama rose to #4 after beating that same Texas AM team 59-0. Guys, can't we just admit that the Aggies are not that good?

Further down that same AP article suggested that there is, in fact, no bias at all. Their reasoning?

According to research done by STATS, SEC teams have risen an average of 2.8 places in the rankings after winning conference games this season.

By comparison, Big 12 teams rose an average of 3.1 places, and Pac-12 teams have moved up 2.3 spots.

However, commenters on that article were all over the obvious flaw in that logic:

most SEC teams are ranked high from the get go and is hard to rise... Alabama wins and move up 1 spot [e.g. from 5th to 4th]...

Similar logic explains why SEC teams appear to fall just as much as other conferences. In the analysis, the researcher assumed all "unranked" teams were ranked 26th. Therefore, an ACC team ranked 25th in the preseason poll can only fall one spot... that skews this kind of analysis dramatically.

The AP article writer himself made this ironic admission right after the above statement:

For ACC teams, the gain is less than half spot (0.4) mostly because the league has had few teams ranked this season and Florida State, the preseason No. 1, had nowhere to go but down.

Yeah, that's pretty much why we're all saying your analysis is bogus, dude.

Then there is this article from Rolling Stone: "The Worldwide Cheerleader..."

In the Rolling Stone article, it begins with the premise that you would think ESPN should want to promote all of their properties equally, right? (Maybe promote the ACC a little more, since its games are not shared with CBS?). Of course, the facts do not support that assumption at all...

They're not just whistlin' Dixie, either - the Stone provides examples:

...two different broadcasters on the network, analyst Brock Huard and anchor Cassidy Hubbarth, proclaimed that Florida State – one of only two teams in this week's AP top five not in the SEC – "barely escaped," "struggled" and took Wake Forest "down to the wire" in a game it won 43-3.

...consider the way ESPN covered a pair of wins against Tennessee earlier this season. The first, a 24-point margin of victory for the Big 12's Oklahoma, was characterized on Twitter as "Oklahoma holds on to beat Tennessee 34-10." [Emphasis added.] The second, a three-point win, 35-32, for the SEC's Georgia, was positioned, "Dawgs run away from Vols."

Yeah, that doesn't sound misleading at all... right...

The article also addresses ESPN's pro-SEC bias when it comes to covering news of players' off-field problems. Here are a few quotes:

ESPN's coverage of off-the-field transgressions by athletes is patently inconsistent across conferences, with clear de-emphasis of violations committed by athletes in the SEC and hyperscrutiny of those outside it.

Exhibit A is, of course, Jameis Winston, who can't pass gas it seems without ESPN calling for his suspension. The Rolling Stone points out that even when Winston is investigated and found innocent, as in the case of the 2,000 autographed items, ESPN still paints him in a bad light.

a statement issued on October 17th by FSU declaring it has found no evidence that Winston received compensation in return for over 2,000 autographed items was spun with the following headline: "FSU: No evidence yet of payment." The word "yet" does not appear anywhere in athletic director Stan Wilcox's actual statement, and its addition is both crucial and arguably reckless.

The Rolling Stone article goes on to show the contrast when an SEC player gets into even worse trouble. For example, when Alabama linebacker D.J. Pettway was kicked off the team in 2013 for his involvement in a violent robbery, Head coach Nick Saban was quoted by ESPN as saying "he was satisfied with the way he handled his punishment". What was the punishment? 11 months at a junior college in Scooba, MS.

Or what about Auburn QB Nick Marshall, who was cited in July for possession of a small amount of marijuana - an actual crime. Marshall's punishment was a half-game suspension, drawing no criticism from ESPN; meanwhile the 4-letter network raked Winston over the coals when received the same penalty over a publicly shouted obscenity – not a crime.

What will it take to stop this foolishness? Since this is an issue with the service provided by college football, a little "customer feedback" might be most appropriate - click here."

Conference Bias in College Football

Conference Bias in College Football

"This past week, four of the top five teams in the Associated Press College Football Poll hailed from the SEC West Division. This has led many, such as Nebraska coach Bo Pelini, to question whether ESPN’s ownership of the brand-new SEC network, which launched this year, may be responsible for such a strange occurrence.
“I don’t think that kind of relationship is good for college football. That’s just my opinion,” Pelini said at his news conference. “Anytime you have a relationship with somebody, you have a partnership, you are supposed to be neutral. It’s pretty hard to stay neutral in that situation.”
As a PAC 12 fan, I often wonder about East Coast bias in college football, especially around Heisman voting. For example, was Andre Williams of Boston College really more deserving of the award than Ka’Deem Carey of Arizona? I—and most of the west coast—would beg to differ. This, I argue, translates to the college football rankings themselves being biased against certain conferences. As an Arizona State fan, it’s particularly frustrating to see my team consistently ranked worse in the AP poll than any advanced metric would suggest.
To see if these suspicions are valid, I have compared the AP college football rankings dating back to 2005 to the Football Outsiders’s stat F/+ for the season’s top 25 teams. F/+ is a combination of the Fremeau Efficiency Index and the S&P+ Ratings. Combined, these stats account for just about everything in college football on a play-by-play level including: play success rate, EqPts per play, drive efficiency, and opponent adjustments. It is probably a fair assumption to say F/+ is the best quantitative measure of team skill that exists at this moment.
Below, I have fit a second-degree polynomial curve with heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors to the data to approximate the average AP ranking for each F/+ rank. Which team has the best F/+ rank since 2005? The 2011 Alabama Crimson Tide that massacred LSU in the National Championship game had a rating of 53.9%.

NCAA AP Rank vs F/+

With this graph in place, I decided to test whether conference bias exists in the AP rankings. To do this, I made dummy variables for each conference (including the Big East, may it RIP). All teams that weren’t in a power conference were placed in the Not Power Conference category. Also, since many teams have shifted conferences over that timespan, I have simply placed them in the conference in which they played the particular season. So for example, Missouri was a Big 12 team until 2012 when it joined the SEC, TCU didn’t join Big 12 until 2012, etc.

Conference	AP Ranking Bias
SEC	-.349
PAC12	1.150
BIG12	1.076
BIG10	.327
ACC	2.629
Big East	-.249
Prestigious	-1.440

I dropped the non Power Conference dummy to avoid perfect collinearity, leaving us with the above table that shows the effect of conference on AP ranking. It is very clear in this case that other conferences are discriminated against when compared to the SEC. Every single coefficient for conference dummies is more positive than SEC, which suggests that being in any conference besides the SEC will lead to a worse ranking in the AP Poll when controlling for F/+.
These results show that a team from the PAC 12 is on average ranked approximately 1.15 spots worse than an equivalent team in a non-power conference, and 1.50 positional spots worse than the same team from the SEC. The former Big East conference also experienced bias compared to non-power conference teams (East Coast bias anyone?), although not to the same extent as the SEC. The largest bias appears to occur on teams from the ACC, where teams are ranked about 2.63 spots worse than expected and this coefficient is statistically significant at the 1% level.
In addition to conference bias, I have found support for a “program prestige bias” whereby the historically good programs Oklahoma, USC, Ohio St, Notre Dame, and Alabama are ranked better in the AP than the advanced metrics would recommend. The last line in the table shows how these teams on average are ranked 1.44 spots better in the AP Rankings than F/+ would predict. Also interesting to note, these results are very nearly statistically significant at the 10% level.
While these results are rather interesting, they aren’t thoroughly scientific because of the lackluster p-values. To tighten the confidence intervals, I would need more data to work with. Unfortunately, the Football Outsiders’s F/+ data only goes back to 2005 and there doesn’t appear to be week-by-week F/+ data. Since these are the final AP rankings that account for the inter-conference play of bowl games, I would expect the midseason AP Rankings to be even more biased.
What teams are hurt most by conference bias? Based on F/+ ratings and a polynomial of best fit, we can predict where a team should be ranked according to F/+ and look at the difference between that predicted figure and the actual AP Ranking of teams with multiple seasons in the Top 25.
As I expected, my Sun Devils do experience ranking bias, although I surely didn’t expect them to be the most biased against in college football!

School	Bias Per Season
Arizona State	-5.669
Nebraska	-5.579
Tennessee	-4.095
Florida State	-3.892
Ole Miss	-3.452
Miami	-2.957
Texas Tech	-2.830
Clemson	-2.824
Oregon State	-2.771
Texas A&M	-2.289
Oklahoma State	-2.011
Michigan	-1.816
Iowa	-1.262
Virginia Tech	-0.813
BYU	-0.407
Boston College	-0.365
Cincinnati	-0.305
Alabama	-0.263
Vanderbilt	-0.108
Louisville	-0.101
Oklahoma	0.046
Wisconsin	0.219
Baylor	0.223
Missouri	0.353
Penn State	0.412
Boise State	0.437
California	0.454
Stanford	0.485
USC	0.567
Central Florida	0.570
Florida	0.704
UCLA	0.996
Kansas State	1.066
West Virginia	1.376
TCU	1.380
Oregon	1.458
Georgia	1.545
South Carolina	1.759
Georgia Tech	1.865
Michigan State	1.900
LSU	1.987
Notre Dame	2.058
Arkansas	2.065
Texas	2.267
Auburn	2.591
Ohio State	3.369
Utah	5.144

Seminole Warriors

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

College GameDay attempts to disprove bias claims

College GameDay attempts to disprove bias claims

"
“You don’t know what you’re talking about if you think it’s good to have the SEC dominate like they’ve dominated,” said Chris Fowler, host of ESPN’s College GameDay, from his stool on the set of the live broadcast college football show this past Saturday morning on LSU’s campus.
The self-described “worldwide leader of sports” has clearly heard the cries of bias toward college football’s best conference, from fans to media to their own employees. Apparently, they’re doing something to dispel it. After stopping on SEC campuses four of the last five weeks, GameDay is eschewing the best and most impactful game in the nation this weekend.
There are four games between ranked teams this coming weekend. Only one of them features two top-10 teams, both with a strong case for inclusion in the College Football Playoff: No. 4 Auburn at No. 7 Ole Miss. GameDay, which goes to the site of a game with national significance each week, will instead be visiting Morgantown, W. Va., where the No. 20 West Virginia Mountaineers will be hosting the No. 10 TCU Horned Frogs in a Big 12 showdown.
Of course, the simple answer to this is, “Who cares?” Where GameDay goes has no bearing on the result of the games or who the coaches and writers vote for in the polls. Regardless of where the show chose to go this weekend, ESPN will still be televising Auburn-Ole Miss to its national audience on Saturday night.
The degree to which the SEC is better than other conferences, be it the PAC 12, Big 12 or another “Power 5″ member is up for debate, but the facts stand strong: the SEC has three of it’s members in the top five of the AP poll, five in the top 10 and six in the top 25. The best teams tend to get the most air time, and that’s what the SEC has.
ESPN and its parent company ABC have contracts with all the major conferences, and ESPN actually gets second- and third-choice of SEC games after CBS. Still, many SEC matchups end up in primetime on the network, thanks to their national relevance.
If feels like College GameDay is bending to the demands of the anti-SEC masses that are sick of seeing the conference’s marquee teams featured on the national program. How long will they avoid the SEC for? No. 3 Alabama visits No. 16 LSU next weekend, then hosts No. 1 Mississippi State the following week. Will GameDay avoid those matchups? Will they avoid the Egg Bowl and Iron Bowl, two games that will likely directly affect the College Football Playoff, just because their viewers are oversaturated with SEC football?
It’s one thing for the show and media giant to claim they’re not biased toward the SEC. It’s a whole other issue if they go the opposite way."

Skepticism of ESPN’s business interests isn’t stupid, it’s necessary

Skepticism of ESPN’s business interests isn’t stupid, it’s necessary

"Chris Fowler taking a minute out of College GameDay on Saturday to speak on the allegations of ESPN’s SEC bias was an extraordinary broadcast moment. Although that minute of airtime might not amount to very much in the grand scheme of things, it was a rare example of a top broadcaster breaking the fourth wall. Fowler went off the script to defend his employer against growing claims that the network gives favorable coverage to the SEC to advance their own business interests.
But while his cohorts on set and surely those working in the control room and Bristol boardrooms cheered Fowler manning the front lines in defending ESPN, there are other consequences. By acknowledging this line of thought, he legitimized it.

By giving claims of ESPN’s SEC bias time on College GameDay, the network’s flagship college football show, Fowler gave credence to the skepticism of ESPN’s SEC interests as something worth responding to. He took the ESPN/SEC narrative from mere message board chatter, fodder for blog posts, and disenchanted feelings from other parts of the country and gave them a national platform. Now, after Fowler’s comments, ESPN’s relationship with the SEC is going to be more scrutinized than ever before.
And in the end, that’s healthy for ESPN, healthy for college football, and healthy for the entire sports complex.
While Fowler’s comments were very logical and made a decent argument (ESPN has contracts with all the other conferences and the playoff would be better off with regional diversity), there was one part of his editorial that was bothersome – calling claims of ESPN’s SEC bias “stupid” and “uninformed.”
In fact, I’d argue that those questions of ESPN’s business relationship with the SEC are the polar opposite.
Questioning ESPN’s glowing coverage about the SEC is being informed. It’s knowing that ESPN has a very close business relationship with the SEC and not trusting everything being said at face value. It’s asking tough questions and trying to go beyond the prevailing narratives to find a deeper truth.
Come to think of it, that’s exactly what ESPN’s journalistic entities do every day. If the reporters of Outside the Lines took everything at face value, and blindly trusted people in positions of authority, they would be of no use. The NFL and its handling of this fall’s domestic violence crisis or their concussion crisis would go unchecked. It didn’t because OTL and others in the media worked to hold the powerful accountable.
In this case, ESPN is the one with the power, the money, and the influence. ESPN is the one with the monopoly over college football. The one who televises the College Football Playoff and over 30 bowl games. The one televising the weekly rankings show. The one who controls the conversation surrounding the sport on a daily basis. The one with billions invested in the sport.
ESPN is the one that requires the watchdogs and the skepticism above anyone else.
So for Fowler and ESPN to say “just trust us, we’re not biased” when Bristol has so much invested in the SEC and SEC Network flies in the face of the best work ESPN itself does on a daily basis.
Just how much does ESPN have invested in the SEC?
- The ESPN-SEC contract that runs till 2034 isn’t just the longest sports rights deal, it’s the longest deal in all of television.
- In 2008, ESPN signed a 15 year, $2.25 billion dollar deal with the SEC.
- This year, ESPN launched the SEC Network and the league’s revenue (and ESPN’s financial investment) is bound to skyrocket. ESPN owns the SEC Network and splits the profit with the SEC 50/50.
- ESPN worked directly with each individual school in the SEC to upgrade their broadcast facilities and capabilities for the SEC Network.
- ESPN runs the official website of the SEC – SECSports.com. On the homepage of the official website of the SEC, you’ll see links to ESPN.com, the SEC Network, and even The Paul Finebaum Show.
These factors go above and beyond any relationship that ESPN has with a league or conference, perhaps only outside the Longhorn Network and the University of Texas. ESPN may have relationships with the other conferences in college football, but nowhere near to this extent where they own a network and promote Finebaum on the league website.
The wind always blows hardest at the top of the mountain. If these skeptical questions of ESPN’s ability to balance journalism and business with the SEC are too cumbersome for them, then ESPN should be more than happy to trade places with Fox Sports. Although many of these same questions can and should be asked of that network, Fox’s 51% ownership of the Big Ten Network doesn’t draw near the same attention as the SEC-ESPN relationship because Fox is largely an afterthought in college football. If ESPN wants to cede their monopoly to get rid of these pesky allegations of bias, so be it.
It’s funny how ESPN only seems to admit to having a massive amount of money and power and influence when it’s convenient to boast about it.
Why is this a conversation special to college football and the ESPN/SEC relationship? As we’ve stated numerous times before, FBS college football is unique in that it is the only sport whose champion is decided mostly off the field. This year, it will be decided by a committee picking four teams who get to play in the playoff. In other sports, every team gets an opportunity to compete for a title on the field. Not so in big-time college football. As you can see in this week’s polls, one-loss Arizona and one-loss Alabama are not created equal. In any other sport, Arizona would have an opportunity to prove themselves and win a title on the field in a tournament or expanded playoff. In college football, they have to depend on a group of people declaring their worthiness.
In that reality, perception and narrative have supreme importance. This is where ESPN’s influence and coverage of the sport takes on extra meaning. If ESPN trumpets the horn of the SEC West week after week and ignores the Pac 12 South, it has a real and tangible impact. If ESPN over-covers the NFC East or AL East, it has no actual impact on outcomes in the sport.
To Fowler’s point, there is no universal proof of a wide-reaching SEC conspiracy at ESPN. But there’s no denying given the facts above that what’s good for ESPN is good for the SEC and vice versa. And as long as ESPN owns the SEC Network, and tries to cover college football while having close business relationships with its constituents, these questions of ESPN’s true intentions are going to exist.
As well they should.
There’s a difference in being skeptical towards the idea of ESPN’s alleged SEC bias and being cynical. The cynic takes a look at Fowler’s commentary and ESPN’s creation of the SEC Network and assumes everyone employed by ESPN is in the tank for the league. If that were the case, Danny Kanell would have been mysteriously taken off the air by now. The skeptic takes a look at ESPN’s vested financial interest in the SEC and the attention the network gives the league and demands a closer inspection. Kirk Herbstreit probably isn’t texting Condi Rice around the clock to make sure she has Auburn in her Top 4, but that doesn’t mean the ESPN-SEC relationship doesn’t bear close monitoring.
The separation of church and state at ESPN – their business interests and journalistic responsibility - is a tightrope that must be walked each and every day in Bristol. When ESPN is unable to walk that tightrope, we end up with League of Denial debacles. If ESPN wants to be the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports and make millions in profit while being the gold standard of sports journalism, they have to be willing to be held to account. ESPN, now estimated at over $50 billion dollars, needs to have their integrity constantly put under the microscope just like any other powerful institution.
ESPN has a bigger impact on the sports world than you or I or anyone working in Bristol can truly understand. As Jim Miller has famously wrote, ESPN is worth more than the NFL and worth more than the NBA, NHL, and MLB combined. To let that kind of power and influence go unchecked, without tough questions being asked, would be a total failure on behalf of anyone not working for ESPN.
If this week’s discussion about the SEC-ESPN relationship causes Bristol to be more careful in balancing their business and journalistic responsibilities and keeping them safely separate, then it’s already done good work. Good, necessary, informed work."

Jimbo Fisher blames ESPN and SEC for FSU’s negative attention

Jimbo Fisher blames ESPN and SEC for FSU’s negative attention

"If you watch ESPN, you would think that Florida State is the only team in the nation that gets in trouble. Every time Jameis Winston does something questionable, it’s a main topic on ESPN.

FSU head coach Jimbo Fisher has finally said that ESPN is to blame for all of the attention.
In the video above, Fisher says to WABM in Birmingham, Ala., “ESPN has the money in the SEC. And it’s because we were so dominant last year.”
Florida State fans all know that ESPN is out for blood when it comes to the witch hunt of the program. It’s good to know that Fisher has finally admitted that ESPN is the problem."

SECPN prediction for playoff. No bias here.

Media coverage perception vs reality.....

Well, one thing is for sure....ALWAYS believe the press.

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The Worldwide Cheerleader: ESPN and the College Football Playoff

Is ESPN pushing a pro-SEC agenda? We'll find out tonight when the first Playoff rankings are revealed

"It would be cliché to suggest that you not believe everything you read. But I'm going to do it anyway, because the banality of that old bromide doesn't make it any less true.
News coverage is one thing; we're not there to see most news take place firsthand and, therefore, have to rely on professionals to report whatever facts they uncover. But everything you need to know about sports, you can witness for yourself.

Sure, if you want to busy yourself with the maudlin melodrama and mad money aspects of athletics – the way ESPN jock coddlers Tom Rinaldi and Darren Rovell do – there's plenty that transpires outside your jurisdiction. But if you concern yourself with that trivial little corner of sports in which people toss balls, slap pucks and sink putts, it's all beamed straight to you, live and direct, allowing each of us to be our own reporter and provide our own analysis.
So it's been painfully perplexing to witness ESPN's use its outsize influence to prop up a Southeastern Conference that, for the first time in a decade, is arguable in a state of decline.
I'm sorry, let me back up the truck a bit. It occurs to me that you may not be aware that ESPN is trying to shape the outcome of the college football season to serve its own corporate interests. Yeah, that's happening.
ESPN has invested heavily in the SEC of late – highlighted by its launch of the SEC Network in August – and needs at least one, ideally four, of the conference's teams to make the inaugural College Football Playoff, to which ESPN holds exclusive broadcast rights (the first set of Playoff rankings will be unveiled tonight at 7:30 p.m. ET on the network as well).
It's good business sense to do whatever's in your power to advance and protect such an investment. Unfortunately, ESPN is the most powerful media brand in college football, managing a portfolio of broadcast rights to not only the Playoff, but every major conference and 33 of the 35 bowl games staged last season. This gives ESPN the power to control the narrative in the most subjectively sport in America.
That narrative? "SEC! SEC! SEC! SEC!"
The Worldwide (Cheer) Leader
It can be argued that Texas A&M derived its lofty ranking through the first month of the season on the hype generated by the SEC Network's inaugural game broadcast, a 52-28 trouncing of a South Carolina team which, barely halfway through the season, already has four losses. The win immediately propelled the No. 21 Aggies to ninth in the Associated Press poll (South Carolina's previous ranking), and they eventually vaulted all the way to No. 6 on the strength of wins over Lamar, Rice, SMU and Arkansas before dropping their next three games by a combined 91 points.
The rhetoric on ESPN up to that point had been that QB Kenny Hill was making fans ask, "Johnny who?" and A&M had even garnered four first place votes at its peak. But where any reasonable commentary might now suggest A&M was a tad overrated, the conversation on ESPN unfailingly shifted to what impressive opponents could have felled such a mighty juggernaut. Until Saturday, four of the top five teams in the country – three of which have had their reputations burnished by wins over Texas A&M – were in not only the SEC, but the SEC West.
OK, maybe ESPN flirts like that with all the boys. With a stake in the fortunes of each of the major conferences, it behooves the Worldwide Leader to shake its pom-poms for them all, right? That notion is belied by either an alarming instance of bias or ignorance among ESPN's announcers and analysts, perhaps suggesting there's an editorial directive to promote SEC teams at the expense of their conferential competitors.
For example, two different broadcasters on the network, analyst Brock Huard and anchor Cassidy Hubbarth, proclaimed that Florida State – one of only two teams in this week's AP top five not in the SEC – "barely escaped," "struggled" and took Wake Forest "down to the wire" in a game it won 43-3.
Or consider the way ESPN covered a pair of wins against Tennessee earlier this season. The first, a 24-point margin of victory for the Big 12's Oklahoma, was characterized on Twitter as "Oklahoma holds on to beat Tennessee 34-10." [Emphasis added.] The second, a three-point win, 35-32, for the SEC's Georgia, was positioned, "Dawgs run away from Vols."
Despite the advent this year of a playoff, the polls matter, perhaps as much as ever. The Playoff Selection Committee's rankings are formulated by a membership whose decisions will undoubtedly be based to some degree on polls determined by lazy voters who are influenced by media coverage of the sport – coverage that is dominated by ESPN. Could a two-loss SEC team make the playoff?
Last week on The Experts, ESPN U's roundtable of college football commentators, the question was posed, "Could a two-loss SEC team make the playoff?" Mike Bellotti's circular defense of his "yes" answer had nothing to do with X's, O's or anything remotely resembling a reasoned case for inclusion. In a response that evoked Nigel Tufnel's rationalization of amplifiers that go up to 11, Bellotti simply said, "They have four teams in the top five." Teams that ESPN, through its determined campaigning, has helped place there.
Sports(Assassi)Nation
ESPN's coverage of off-the-field transgressions by athletes is patently inconsistent across conferences, with clear de-emphasis of violations committed by athletes in the SEC and hyperscrutiny of those outside it. For instance, save a link on its SEC blog, ESPN has yet to report the discovery of 100 grams of marijuana and nearly $5,000 in cash in Alabama tight end Kurt Freitag's dorm room.

Jameis Winston after a play on October 18th, 2014 in Tallahassee, FL. (Photo: Streeter Lecka/Getty)

Meanwhile, the chaplain for Oklahoma, a "staffer" for Cincinnati and RB Joey Iosefa of Hawaii have all received pixels and airtime for their offenses. Of course, Jameis Winston is a fixture atop the network's programming blocks, tickers and home pages, mostly for news based on unfounded allegations. In fact, a statement issued on October 17th by FSU declaring it has found no evidence that Winston received compensation in return for over 2,000 autographed items was spun with the following headline: "FSU: No evidence yet of payment." The word "yet" does not appear anywhere in athletic director Stan Wilcox's actual statement, and its addition is both crucial and arguably reckless.
Contrast that with a recent feature on ESPN.com about Alabama linebacker D.J. Pettway, kicked off the team in 2013 for his involvement in a robbery and assault so brutal one of the assailants believed the victim dead until they gave his lifeless body an investigative kick. As the article states, "[Head coach Nick] Saban said he was satisfied with the way he handled his punishment: 11 months of what amounted to exile at a junior college in Scooba, Mississippi." The victim, as a result of the vicious attack, contemplated suicide and dropped out of school.
Not high-profile enough? Consider the treatment of the starting quarterback opposite Winston in last year's national championship game, Nick Marshall, who was cited in July for possession of a small amount of marijuana, a violation of a city ordinance. Auburn imposed a half-game suspension, drawing no criticism, while Winston received the same penalty over a publicly shouted obscenity – not a crime – and earned this line from ESPN's Mark Schlabach: "How many strikes does Winston get before he goes from being a foolish, immature college student to a complete knucklehead who can't be trusted?" Shortly thereafter, Winston's suspension was expanded to a full game.
In early 2012, Marshall was also dismissed from the University of Georgia after he was caught stealing from a teammate. You would think that, like Winston, his missteps would follow him into every broadcast. But you'd be wrong.
Shell Game
The phenomenon we're witnessing is not unlike the self-perpetuating effect of booms and busts on the American economy: the marginalized class (non-SEC) suffers more from the lows and benefits less from the highs, further depressing them over time. Clemson, an ACC team with the same record as Texas A&M before the Aggies' third loss, was still ranked lower despite starting the season five spots higher, losing to 12th-ranked Georgia and taking the No. 1 team to overtime, both on the road.
Meanwhile, the privileged class (SEC) is better able to weather setbacks, and profits disproportionately from its successes. Alabama, receiving credit for being consistently good over the last several years, dropped just four spots after its loss to Ole Miss; but the Mississippi schools are also forgiven for being among the worst Big Five programs in recent history, not only enjoying lofty rankings for their out-of-nowhere success so far this season (as opposed to the suspicion with which upstarts from other conferences are typically regarded), but bestowing "quality losses" to the teams they've defeated. Auburn is ranked two spots ahead of Notre Dame in this week's AP poll, despite losing to (then) third-ranked Mississippi State by 15 points. Meanwhile, the Irish barely lost to No. 2 Florida State by four points on a game-deciding penalty.
Three SEC teams have yet to record a conference win, going a combined 0-13 so far in league play. Five of the conference's teams are .500 or worse. Tennessee hasn't turned in a winning season since Obama's first year in office. Florida has won just seven of its last 19 games. LSU, South Carolina and Texas A&M haven't lived up to preseason expectations, and Arkansas is Vanderbilt now.
The collapse has forced the most powerful media entity in college football to shift its influence to the Mississippi and Alabama schools. Where No. 3 Ole Miss' loss on Saturday might ordinarily represent a setback to such a cause, ESPN has created such an incestuous bubble of hype that there can be no arguing when these teams lose. "Alabama lost, but it was to Ole Miss...Ole Miss lost, but it was to LSU...LSU lost, but it was to Auburn… Auburn lost, but it was to Mississippi State."
But allegations of bias are finally beginning to bubble up from the fan level, prompting ESPN's College GameDay host Chris Fowler to take to twitter last week in defense of the mothership.

Of course that's true. A hale Big Ten would generate even more revenue on top of the South American economy ESPN already operates. The real question however is, if given a choice, would the network rather have a dominant Big Ten or a dominant SEC?
Fowler further acknowledged the controversy during GameDay on Saturday, weirdly breaking the fourth wall to declare "I get defensive when stupid, uninformed stuff gets repeated again and again, and people all over the world think that somehow we have a stake in having three teams from [the SEC] get in [the playoff]."
Let's forget that ESPN has built a $50 billion sportszilla by repeating stupid, uninformed stuff again and again – it does have a stake in placing as many teams in the playoff as possible. Fowler admitted as much during the same 70-second screed. Of the current power imbalance in college football that favors the SEC he said, as if to refute ESPN's aforementioned stake, "That's great for the SEC…That's great for the SEC Network…" But the SEC Network is ESPN. Even defenses of the network end up making the case against it.
Media today is a choir of witless parrots reinforcing consumers' preexisting predilections, an echo chamber that, at its best, rarely edifies consumers and, at its worst, actively manipulates them. Such criticisms were previously reserved for political and news coverage , but now we can't even trust the accuracy of reporting on our meaningless pastimes.
Maybe the saying should be "Don't read everything you believe."

Monday, October 27, 2014

Chris Fowler In the Crosshairs: What His SEC Rant Says About ESPN And College Football

Chris Fowler In the Crosshairs: What His SEC Rant Says About ESPN And College Football

"Chris Fowler caused quite a stir this past Saturday. Anytime a central college football media figure steps into the ESPN-SEC conversation, the college football world pays attention. The Student Section editors are here to tackle this issue, and we’re happy to invite a special guest — TSS columnist Allen Kenney — to our roundtable.
Before going forward with this discussion, know that one of our partner sites at Bloguin has addressed this topic: Matt Yoder of Awful Announcing weighed in on L’Affaire Fowler this past Saturday. Be sure to give his story a look and use this discussion as a companion piece of sorts.
*
What is your response to this (now-viral) Chris Fowler rant?

*
EDITOR’S NOTE: Fowler’s on-air remarks followed these two tweets sent earlier last week, which also form a part of this larger discussion:

*
Terry Johnson:
On Twitter @SectionTPJ
Although I never watch GameDay anymore, I used to respect Chris Fowler. Whether he was covering college football or tennis, audiences could always count on Fowler to present both sides of the argument by citing facts. Even when he had a dog in the fight, he did his best to remain neutral.
Not anymore. With just one sentence, Fowler completely destroyed his credibility.
For those that missed it, here’s what he said:
“I’m a little defensive, but I get defensive when stupid, uninformed stuff gets repeated again and again, and somehow people all over the world think we have a stake in having three teams from this league get in.”
If anyone’s uninformed in this case, it’s Fowler. Regardless of how “impartial” he claims ESPN is, the network does have a vested interest in the SEC’s success. If he’d read Bart’s article last week, he would have seen how Bo Pelini’s comments about the unholy alliance between the SEC and ESPN were 100 percent accurate, and why it might not even matter in the end.
More importantly, Mr. Fowler fails to recognize that most college football fans do think that the four-letter network is biased in favor of the SEC. In fact, an ESPN poll conducted after Pelini’s comments, indicated that 81 percent of the respondents thought the network was biased in favor of the SEC.
That number would be even higher if the poll were conducted today after Brent Musburger’s “Somebody says we’ve got SEC bias, deal with it they’re the best.”

Much like a neutered dog, he simply doesn’t get it. Bias perceived is bias achieved. As long as viewers continue to see it that way, the network has a problem. Remember, the first rule in running a successful business is that the customer is always right.
What sickens me most about his comments is that they’re extremely unprofessional. Even the greatest journalist in history will receive his/her share of criticism over time. When that happens, it’s on the individual author to respond with facts to support his or her opinion. Merely saying that people who feel differently are stupid and uninformed does not fall into this category. While that type of behavior is acceptable for a three-year old who didn’t get a second scoop of ice cream, it’s simply not okay for a professional broadcaster, whose job is to support his opinion with facts and evidence.
Shame on you, sir.
Allen Kenney:
On Twitter @BlatantHomerism
Fowler is correct in so far as the conspiracy and agenda accusations against his employer do go too far. He’s also right on the granular level regarding the playoff: A lopsided tournament in favor of one conference or region doesn’t have the same appeal as one where the participants come from all corners.
So I can understand why Fowler would bristle at the accusation that he’s an SEC shill, but he’s kind of ignoring the larger point.
ESPN does have a bias towards its bottom line. Pumping up its partners helps draw eyeballs, and we’ve reached the point where the Worldwide Leader and the SEC are essentially intertwined. Intentionally or not, ESPN is increasingly building its college football identity around that particular conference, which leads to a barrage of SEC-heavy promotion and chatter. It’s a smart business decision to cater to such a passionate audience. At some point, though, everyone else just gets drowned out.
Bart Doan:
On Twitter @TheCoachBart
I don’t watch College Gameday. Never have. And never will. So I come to this with a disadvantage. That said, it means nothing to me. Chris Fowler is just like the rest of us, a shill to who pays his bills.
Most of us, come hell or high water, will defend our employer because that’s who butters our bread. If we have an issue that’s of measure, we support the company out front and then have internal discussions about how to change it.
Fowler did what’s expected of an employee, and that’s defend the company he works for even if the criticism is legitimate. … and to me, it is. There’s no point in rehashing the same article over and over that I’ve written to this point, but ESPN has a vested financial interest in the SEC’s success, so the company obviously roots for it and promotes its employees forwarding the message.
The only interesting thing about this entire ordeal is that you start to wonder at what point the spin cycle of ESPN propaganda reaches a negative crescendo.
At some point, people become like I did long ago and give up on watching or listening to crap just to be outraged, as opposed to finding something else to do. At some point, you promote the same thing so much, and everyone buys it so much, that everyone else feels disenchanted with their chances and just sort of tunes out and says, “Well, that’s their thing now, so, whatever.”
ESPN should be careful with the propaganda, because no matter how much money it might be making now, there’s eventually a tipping point. People cut through the BS as they age, and as with news programming or anything else, people grow up and realize they’re done watching slanted opinion passed off as fact.
If fans feel as though it’s just the Deep South’s football teams and then everyone else is just sort of there for show, they’ll gradually stop caring.
Where that line is and when it happens, I have no idea, but don’t think it doesn’t exist in a following generation. As for Fowler, he’s just saying what the guys who line his pockets want to hear, whether he believes it or not.

When you consider Chris Fowler’s remarks, you’re free to arrive at your own conclusions. Just be sure to look at them from various perspectives: from a corporate perspective; from the GameDay production truck’s perspective; from Fowler’s own perspective; from the perspective of how different college football media coverage would have been if Ohio State had thumped Florida in January of 2007; and other vantage points you might not have previously considered.

Matt Zemek
On Twitter @SectionMZ
The substance of Chris Fowler’s remarks contains a mixture of the reasonable and the irrational. Picking apart his words and their veracity is not that complicated. It’s the context surrounding Fowler’s remarks which demands unpacking and explanation.
Fowler vented, and as Bart said, he’s saying something in defense of his employer, which we can all readily understand no matter how else we might view this larger set of issues. There’s a measure of politics here, and when public figures make political statements, we know there’s an intent behind the words. So what if the statement isn’t entirely accurate? It’s politics. Political people make political statements in political situations.
Yes, Fowler was and is plainly inaccurate and wildly excessive on some fronts. Labeling notions of pro-SEC bias on ESPN’s part as “stupid” and “uninformed” is way off the mark. Fowler can disagree with the contention that his employer favors the SEC — there’s nothing wrong with that. Insisting that said contention is “stupid,” though? We can laugh that one right out of the room.
Fowler is correct in saying that balanced regional representation would be great for the playoff. What he says also gets to the point that if Ohio State had drubbed Florida in the 2007 BCS National Championship Game (the first season in which the BCS went to a five-bowl setup and created a stand-alone title game with its own name), the SEC’s centrality in college football might not have become the pervasive reality we see in front of us today. Ohio State’s twin losses to Florida and LSU in consecutive BCS title games, combined with USC’s annual thrashings of Big Ten teams in Rose Bowls, did so much to shift public perception to the point of calcification in a highly-politicized portion of college football history. Fowler’s remarks didn’t directly say this, but that’s a large layer of subtext worth mentioning.
Let’s go beyond Fowler’s immediate remarks to an even deeper degree. There’s one very particular point I want to get across before this discussion ends.
*
Covering tennis as I do — I am, for those unaware, the editor of Bloguin’s tennis site, Attacking The Net — I have written about the mindset ESPN and other tennis broadcasters bring to their coverage of major tournaments. It’s ironic that Fowler also covers tennis, because in many ways, Roger Federer and the small group of tennis superstars (Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams, and Maria Sharapova round out the list) are very much to tennis what the SEC is to college football. ESPN and other television networks cover the SEC the way they cover Federer, Nadal, Serena, and Sharapova in tennis.
Here’s the very granular and important point to make: While an executive in a corporate suite won’t tell on-air talent exactly what to say — it’s absurd to think executives hand their talent a list of bullet points the same way telemarketers or political campaign callers are asked to follow a planned script — networks CERTAINLY DO SHAPE how they cover events. We should all be able to see and understand this dynamic at work.
There is a general philosophy at work in a network’s coverage of a tennis tournament. When ESPN showed a live interview with Federer instead of the start of a women’s quarterfinal match with Caroline Wozniacki (who isn’t exactly an unknown name in her sport, but isn’t the global icon Federer is), it made clear its philosophy: We’re here to promote the superstars, because that’s what we feel will get the biggest ratings. The statement wasn’t made by an on-air personality so much as the network itself, and how the production truck put together its coverage of the event. The production truck is where a lot of the action happens. That layer of involvement and creative activity — stuck nicely between the corporate level and the surface product you see courtesy of on-air talent such as Chris Fowler — exists in the shadows. Yet, that’s where the shaping of events and the creation of a fuller broadcast product comes into being.
Are individual commentators handed marching orders? No.
However, the production truck — which conducts production meetings — works with on-air talent to outline the larger contours of a broadcast, going over the points of emphasis and general themes that are going to be talked about. This inevitably and indelibly shapes a broadcast. It’s true in college football, it’s true in tennis, and it’s certainly true in politics as well. The flow and form of live broadcasts involve anchors and pundits who have their own opinions, but the production truck level — especially in sports, more so than in politics — does so much to create the larger boundaries within which on-air talent speaks and reacts. A lot of fans would do well to realize this hidden dynamic of the broadcasting business.
What I’m really getting to is this point: Don’t be so irate about what the individual broadcaster says. Don’t think that Chris Fowler has sold his soul to the journalistic devil. Again, he’s playing the game any employee must play with his employer.
This ESPN-SEC entanglement is not so much a matter of bias (though it certainly involves a lot of it). It is more a matter of saturation, something Bart and Allen both referenced in their answers (albeit in a slightly different direction). The mere act of talking about something so much, to the extent that other topics get shoved to the side, is itself a statement. The details of what one actually says or means (or doesn’t mean) lose centrality at a certain point.
All that matters (this is very familiar to viewers of news shows on American politics, for those who foolishly continue to watch them, believing that there’s something of value in them…) is that people on TV are talking about the subject the production truck or the executives want to talk about. You, the viewer, are watching what the truck or the executives think you want to watch. The content or quality of the opinions — those are secondary concerns, maybe not even concerns at all.
So it goes with Roger Federer in tennis to the exclusion of just about everything else. So it goes with the SEC on ESPN in the world of college football.
Chris Fowler knows this better than anyone else."

ESPN and SEC bias

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Former VP of NFL officiating: SEC referees losing integrity, credibility

Former VP of NFL officiating: SEC referees losing integrity, credibility

"Mike Pereira twice has noticed something with SEC officiating that has him “really pissed.”
Pereira is a familiar name to football fans of all walks. The former NFL Vice President of Officiating is currently an officiating analyst for FOX Sports, giving his input on various decisions throughout both college and NFL broadcasts. Pereira has apparently been paying close attention to the SEC this season, and he had some harsh words for the conference’s officials.
In his column on Sunday, Pereira called out SEC officials for some shady behavior in recent weeks, saying that the conference is losing its integrity and credibility. He professes his admiration for the league, but blasts the officiating.
In Mississippi State’s win over Auburn two weeks ago, Pereira noticed officials communicating with someone off the field through their headsets as they debated whether or not to pick up a flag for intentional grounding, which he called a farce.
In Alabama’s win at Tennessee on Saturday, Pereira called “bull” again. In the first quarter, Tennessee punted the ball away, and Alabama fielded it with a fair catch. A personal foul was called on the play, after which the officials huddled up. Pereira said it was clear the referees were clearly communicating with someone off the field again, this time about how to enforce the penalty. Pereira said 2:36 of real time elapsed between the end of the play and their official call.
Pereira says in his column that, two weeks ago, he reached out to national officiating coordinator Rogers Redding, the former SEC officials coordinator, about who was on the communications system. Pereira was told the headsets only allow officials to communicate with each other on the field, which the former NFL official does not buy.
“But now it appears the SEC has someone that nobody else has — a mystery man. I’m not sure where he is, but he’s providing information to the officials on the field. If the SEC denies it, they’re not telling the truth,” Pereira said.
As it stands now, conferences have either seven or eight officials on the field. The SEC uses seven referees, with one alternate that assists with line of scrimmage calls, according to Pereira. Based on what he has seen, Pereira accuses the SEC of playing by its own set of rules.
“It was unacceptable in that Auburn-Mississippi State game — and it was unacceptable in the Alabama-Tennessee game. If (SEC commisioner Mike) Slive condones this and Redding fails to investigate and stop it, then the SEC and the NCAA have a big problem in officiating,” Pereira said. “In my eyes, their officiating staff is losing their credibility.”

SEC has lost almost all credibility and integrity in officiating

"The SEC.

I think most of you know those letters stand for something special in college football.

The Southeastern Conference.

It has long been one of the best conferences in the country. From the players to the officials to commissioner Mike Slive.

But I’m not sure what those letters stand for anymore.

Something happened in the Alabama-Tennessee game Saturday night that has me irritated. Well, I actually passed irritated two weeks ago when I was hot about this happening in the Auburn-Mississippi State game. I’ve moved on to really pissed now.

The “this” I’m referring to is the abuse of the communications system used by the SEC.

Two weeks ago, the officials at the Auburn-Mississippi State game were noticeably talking to someone, somewhere over their communications system at Davis Wade Stadium, who gave them information to pick up a flag for intentional grounding. It was an absolute farce.

What happened Saturday night in Tennessee was just as obvious -- and just as bad. Here was the situation:

Tennessee had the ball, fourth-and-4 at the Tennessee 42-yard line with 7:20 left in the first quarter. Alabama led 13-0. The Vols’ Matt Darr punted the ball 48 yards and the Tide’s Cyrus Jones signaled for a fair catch and caught it. There was a personal foul called on the play.

That’s when the Farce Part II commenced.

This play clearly demonstrated it happened again. From the time the ball was snapped for the punt until a decision was made by referee Matt Moore, 2:36 elapsed. During that time, you could obviously see the group of officials that had huddled were getting input from someone. Someone, somewhere, was giving them information on the personal foul penalty that was called a dead-ball foul on the kicking team.

What? Are you kidding me?

Two weeks ago, I asked the national coordinator of officials, Rogers Redding, who also happens to be the former coordinator of officials for the SEC, about this and he vehemently denied this process was taking place. He said the communications system was only for use of the officials on the field and no other person was on that system.

Bull.

Here’s the deal: I greatly respect the SEC. They have the strongest football conference in the country. They’ve had an incredible commissioner in Slive, who is retiring July 31, 2015. What Slive has done for the SEC -- and for the total landscape of college football -- is incredible. He’s had a great impact on the game.

But now I think it’s time to challenge the SEC’s credibility and integrity when it comes to officiating.

Some conferences have been allowed to experiment by using an eighth official on the field. I don’t particularly like it, but I understand it. The SEC also has an eighth official on one crew, as well as an alternate official who actually stands on the line of scrimmage. He’s also been given approval to give input on specific calls from the line of scrimmage, such as the quarterback being beyond or behind the line of scrimmage when he releases the pass.

But now it appears the SEC has someone that nobody else has -- a mystery man. I’m not sure where he is, but he’s providing information to the officials on the field. If the SEC denies it, they’re not telling the truth.

Here’s the solution: Put all of the conferences on microphones and let them talk to somebody upstairs. Get rid of replay. Let that person upstairs make decisions on everything. From face mask calls to pass interference to personal fouls, as they did in this case, and intentional grounding like they did two weeks ago in that Auburn-Mississippi State game.

Does the SEC have its own set of rules? Yes. And it’s not right what they’re doing.

It was unacceptable in that Auburn-Mississippi State game -- and it was unacceptable in the Alabama-Tennessee game. If Slive condones this and Redding fails to investigate and stop it, then the SEC and the NCAA have a big problem in officiating. In my eyes, their officiating staff is losing their credibility.

It hurts me to challenge the integrity of officials -- it really does. When I think about it, I’m not challenging them as much as I’m challenging the integrity of the officiating department in the SEC for telling them to use this system this way when it’s not allowable by rule. The SEC doesn’t need any more advantages than it already has. They’re already the best. They should let their officials officiate with the same tools as the other officials in all of the other conferences.

They know about it, they’ve been asked about it, yet they continue to let it happen.

The SEC.

I liked those initials much better when they stood for something more."

Raise The Torch Video

Raise The Torch

Friday, October 24, 2014

FSU vs UF

FSU/SEC

TJ Pittinger ‏@TJ_Pittinger

Last time FSU played:

Auburn (we won 34-31)

UF (we won 37-7)

USCe (we won 26-17)

BAMA (we won 24-14).

But, hey y'all: SEC!!!

Realignment/Conference News 10/19/14

Never believe any predictions, but interesting to read.

Of course, the ACC Network won't happen, that much is likely true.

Realignment/Conference News 10/19/14

Brian Ethridge
10/18/2014

"First of all, Ashley and I have talked to at least 10 sources near this and not all are Baylor sources. We've both been lucky to have made great relationships over our careers away from 247Sports which help us at 247Sports. All 10 have the same responses.
1. Realignment isn't dead, but it isn't active
And the meaning of active is breaking GOR and going to another conference. That isn't very likely to happen. But it isn't dead as schools from other conferences continue to jockey for a position in the major conferences.
2. Conference news:
ESPN has asked to take the LHN from a singular school and transform into the Big 12 Network. The success of Oklahoma's Tier 3 rights on Fox and other schools growing competitiveness in Tier 3 has created a void in the Southwest which is dominated by schools in the Big 12. While trying to push the SEC Network into those states the question kept coming up as to why the Big 12 didn't have their own. The answer is no longer at Texas.
a. The new AD at Texas sees the network as a burden.
b. Charlie Strong sees the network as a nuisance.
c. Rick Barnes sees the network as hindering his time.
d. Only coach that likes it is Garrido.
e. Texas doesn't need the money for the trouble it has become.
3. Leaks/Publically Talking About Network
Baylor's AD Ian McCaw has hinted about this at least three times on David Smoak's show and we began gathering info after the first mention. Baylor sources we have talked with were caught off guard on our first mention and said they didn't know anything about it. Now that has changed as the idea has been bantered around more.
4. ESPN Behind The Curtain
ESPN wants to have this completed for the 2015 football season. One caveat is for all schools to not play FCS schools any longer and attempt to pick up other P5 schools. This may not be possible at this time for 8 schools to get out of their games and find other opponents, but it is being attempted. In 2016 the scheduling would occur.
5. ACC Falling Behind
The ACC Network dreamed about with the ACC GOR has not materialized at this point. The ACC continues to fall behind financially from the other four conferences. With several members discussing dropping football if stipends were instituted, the cracks have started to show in the choices to expand. Boston College, Pittsburg, Syracuse, Wake Forest, and Miami have balked at paying players stipends or offering healthcare for players post college career.
6. Future
With the ACC Network not currently happening, several schools have kept open ties to the conferences they wish to join. The schools solidarity remains solid in a public setting, but the BiG, Big 12, and SEC have remained in contact. The GOR will be up in 10 years and movement will start in 7-8 years for Division 4.
7. Timetable
A timetable for the newly formed Big 12 Network by ESPN is for the 2015 season. The network would bring an additional 120 million to the conference. The extra 12 million per team will again further the financial landscape from the BiG, SEC, and Big 12. The Pac 12 has not seen the financial reward from their conference network at this time with lower carriage rates than expected, but they also remain far ahead of the ACC.
8. Which schools are looking to leap?
With Maryland being $33 million lighter, the reward for going now isn't as great as 2012, but this amount would be made up in 3 years by any ACC school moving conferences. The Tobacco Road foursome of Wake Forest, UNC, NC State, and Duke remain solid to keep their tradition alive. UVA, VT, Clemson, Florida State, Louisville, and Notre Dame listen to money not currently being made by their conference.
9. What stops this from happening?
The ACC Network happens and equals the revenue generated by the SEC, BiG, Pac 12, and Big 12 networks."

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Haters Gonna Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate

Promise you if the SEC were in a position where their TV Network (ESPN) was going after a school relentlessly that the conference commish would be fighting for the conference.

John Swofford? Nowhere to be found. But hey, this is the same conference that added ON to a Clemson NCAA penalty years ago and did no such thing to UNC.

This is one of many reasons I hope FSU winds up in another conference someday.

Haters Gonna Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate

"If you’ve tuned into ESPN at all this football season, you know how much heat the defending BCS National Champion Seminoles have taken, particularly surrounding their Heisman Trophy winning quaterback, Jameis Winston. Every week a new story emerges defaming the star player, the team, the coach, and the university. Even the New York Times chimed in, giving its two-cents about the state of affairs at FSU, exposing what they deemed as a corrupt system for its privileged athletes. But why all the hate? If you take a deeper look it comes down to, as most things do—MONEY.
Let’s look at the numbers. Since 2003 the SEC has appeared in ten BCS Championship games, winning eight. Keep in mind, ESPN broadcasts 34 Bowl games and in 2011 aired the National Championship for the first time, earning a 16.1 rating and setting the record for the highest overnight viewership in cable television history. In that game, Heisman Trophy winner Cam Netwon led the Auburn Tigers to a last-second field goal victory over the Oregon Ducks. The following two years set similar records and garnered over 100,000,000 million viewers in total. The “BCS Megacast” airs on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPN Radio, ESPN 3, ESPN Classic, ESPN Deportes, ESPN Goaline, and ESPN International simultaneously, and with the inclusion of WatchESPN’s viewership (growing by 50% annually), you can imagine the amount of cash the game generates for the network. This year ESPN out bid Fox Sports for the exclusive rights to the first ever College Football Playoff. They will pay an outrageous $500 Million+ for each year of the contract. To say ESPN has a stake in the quality of the BCS Championship game (and the ratings that come with it) is a serious understatement.
The SEC brings in an average of 3.8 million viewers per game. That’s almost as much as the second (Big 10) and third (ACC) highest rated conferences combined. It also dominates the number of nationally televised games by a similar ratio. These numbers surely played a role in ESPN’s most recent business venture – The SEC Network, of which it holds a controlling interest of 80%. Granted, it’s not the first channel dedicated to a single conference. The Big 10 Network and Pac-12 Network also exist, though both are owned solely or in part by the conferences themselves. ESPN’s contract extends through 2034.
What does this have to do with Florida State University, you ask? The Seminole’s pending dynasty exists as the single biggest threat to the SEC’s domination of the FBS, and thus the biggest threat to ESPN’s bottom line for the next twenty years. It’s no secret that media speculation influences College Football’s Top-25 rankings and when the world’s largest sporting news network has a vested interest in the success of a specific conference, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why it hates Florida State. Why else would the undefeated defending national champions fall second in the rankings to the SEC’s Mississippi State Bulldogs, who were unranked at the beginning of the season? The only explanation is MONEY, and it’s created a huge conflict of interest.
When ESPN’s financial interests hinge largely on the success of the SEC, of course they’re going to do as much as they can to undermine and tarnish any opposition that poses even the slightest of threats to its piggy bank. So, it spends weeks trashing the 19-year old Jameis Winston for making a vulgar comment on campus. It hammers on his reputation, calling him immature and a thug in a desperate attempt to rattle him mentally prior to huge games, or worse get him suspended. It’s true, Winston hasn’t done much to the contrary to help his case with the alleged sexual assault accusations, the crab legs shoplifting incident, and the most recent autograph controversy, but to FSU’s credit when hard evidence was presented implicating Winston (as was the case with the shoplifting), they took swift action and suspended him for three baseball games. Regardless if you think he’s guilty or innocent, it cannot be denied that the media has pounced on and criticized every little mistake that they can find surrounding the Noles because it’s the only way they can prevent FSU from emerging as the dynasty it’s seemingly destined to become and preserve the lucrative financial relationship they’ve built with the South Eastern Conference. It’s their way of whispering into the selection committee’s ear, “Don’t let them in!”
This is just the tip of the iceberg though because not only is ESPN actively attempting to sabotage the Noles’ Unconquered efforts, it also seems to actively ignore any and all negativity surrounding the SEC teams. Lloyd Tubman of the 5-2 Kentucky Wildcats was arrested earlier this month on charges of first-degree rape, and four more players, RB Stanley Williams, WR Dorian Baker, QB Drew Baker, and DE Tymere Dubose were all involved in a BB-gun incident that resulted in the entire university being locked down. This month, University of Georgia DB Shaq Jones was also arrested for shoplifting $43 worth of merchandise from a Walmart in Athens. Imagine for a second, if Jameis Winston (or any other FSU player for that matter) had been involved in a BB-gun incident that resulted in a school-wide lock down. ESPN would’ve crucified him and taken his reputation and any hopes he has of playing in the NFL out to pasture. When hundreds of hours of coverage are spent scrutinizing a vulgar statement made by Winston, yet not one of hour is spent on any of these SEC-related incidents, you start to realize how deep the impartiality really runs in Bristol, Connecticut. Is this because Florida State is a dirty, corrupt university or is it the fact that they have a giant target on their backs because they pose a direct threat to the hundreds of millions of dollars ESPN has at stake? You make the call.
The real bottom line is that the Seminoles continue to succeed in spite of all the efforts to knock them off course. Haters gonna hate, but players are gonna play.

By Mitchell Wesley

[Sources include Forbes Magazine, TV By the Numbers, and Arrest Nation.]"

Stories ESPN has ignored

Just thought I'd put them all in one place.

Ole Miss 'aware' of alleged Robert Nkemdiche

A Tennessee fan apparently tried to get the Rebels' star DE suspended.
http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2014/10/13/6970231/robert-nkemdiche-bong-photo-hugh-freeze-ole-miss

Stephen Garcia says he saw players being paid

Former South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia saw college players being paid for autographs “all day every day,” he told a Charlotte radio station on Thursday.
http://www.gogamecocks.com/2014/10/16/629973_stephen-garcia-says-he-saw-players.html?rh=1

FSU Star Jameis Winston -- My Rape Accuser Tr

http://www.tmz.com/2014/09/24/fsu-jameis-winston-rape-accuser-extortion-7-million/
http://www.tmz.com/2014/09/24/fsu-jameis-winston-rape-accuser-extortion-7-million/

Police report: Student said Treon Harris igno

The University of Florida student who accused quarterback Treon Harris of rape told investigators she warded off his advances but still decided to spend the night in his room, according to a police report released Wednesday.

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20141022/ARTICLES/141029908/-1/sports06?Title=Police-report-Student-said-Treon-Harris-ignored-pleas-to-get-off-her